Arthur Kinoy Is Dead at 82; Lawyer for Chicago Seven

Arthur Kinoy, one of the lawyers for the Chicago Seven and a founder of the Center for Constitutional Rights, long a force in the civil rights movement, died on Sept. 19 at his home in Montclair, N.J. He was 82.

In 1969, Mr. Kinoy joined William M. Kunstler and Leonard I. Weinglass in defending eight prominent antiwar activists on charges that they had conspired to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The seven, including Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger and Tom Hayden, were all found guilty, but the verdicts were overturned on appeal.

He was involved with many other controversial cases and clients, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, for whom he filed the last appeal of their death sentence, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the Harlem congressman, in his fight against expulsion from Congress.

Mr. Kinoy, who retired in 1991 from Rutgers University, was very active in the civil rights movement in the 1950's and 60's and in representing witnesses called before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

In 1966, when he was representing student antiwar leaders before the committee, the acting chairman ordered him arrested for trying to argue a point of law with its members, and had him forcibly removed from the hearing room by three marshals. But his subsequent conviction on a charge of disorderly conduct was overturned on appeal.

Mr. Kinoy was involved in a number of landmark legal verdicts. In 1965 he successfully argued the case of Dombrowski v. Pfister before the Supreme Court, which empowered federal district judges to stop enforcement of laws that had ''a chilling effect'' on free speech.

In a subsequent case, Dombrowski v. Senator Eastland, he established that the Counsel of the Senate Internal Security Committee was not immune from suits for violations of citizens' civil rights.

In 1969 Mr. Kinoy persuaded the Supreme Court that the expulsion of Mr. Powell from the House of Representatives on charges of misuse of public funds was unconstitutional. The congressman was eventually allowed to keep his seat, though he was stripped of his seniority.

In 1972 the Supreme Court upheld his contention that President Richard M. Nixon had no ''inherent power'' to wiretap domestic political organizations.

Mr. Kinoy was one of the lawyers defending Julius and Ethel Rosenberg at their trial on atomic espionage charges in 1951. Two years later he made a last attempt before a Federal appeals court to prevent their execution.

Mr. Kinoy's' first wife, the former Susan Knopf, died in 1999. He is survived by his second wife, Barbara Webster, and the children of his first marriage, Joanne, of Oak Park, Ill., and Peter, of Brooklyn.

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Arthur Kinoy was born in New York on Sept. 29, 1920, and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1941. In World War II he served with the Army in North Africa and Italy. He then entered Columbia Law School, where he was executive editor of The Law Review and graduated in 1947.

In 1966 he helped found the Center for Constitutional Rights with a group of lawyers whose civil rights work in Mississippi had convinced them of the need for a new legal center dedicated to using the law to advance human rights and fight oppression in many areas.

The center, in Manhattan, is still active. This month, a settlement between the New York Police Department and a group accusing it of racial profiling required the department to report every instance of stopping and searching to the center and to other lawyers for the plaintiffs.

After first combining a general legal practice in New York with his civil rights work, Mr. Kinoy decided in 1964 to move into teaching, joining the Rutgers University Law School as a professor. He retired in 1991 as a professor emeritus.

In 1983, Harvard University Press published his book ''Rights on Trial: The Odyssey of a People's Lawyer.''

In a widely publicized battle, Mr. Kinoy fought forced retirement from Rutgers at 70 with wide support from students and faculty members, seeking an exemption from the federal law that allows colleges to set a retirement age.

Eventually, the Rutgers administration agreed to a plan that would let him stay in his post if outside funds could be found to pay him. The funds were not forthcoming from the Legislature, however, and he stepped down.

At the time, Henry Furst, a Newark lawyer and one of Mr. Kinoy's former students, said of his forced retirement:

''Over his 26 years he is the reason many students came to Rutgers -- to study with him. It's like killing Socrates.''

Correction: September 23, 2003, Tuesday Because of an editing error, an obituary on Saturday about Arthur Kinoy, a civil rights lawyer who helped defend the Chicago Seven antiwar protesters in 1969, misstated his role in the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, as well as the charges against them. He was the lawyer in 1951 for their final appeal against the death penalty, not a lawyer at their trial. They were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage, not with actual atomic espionage.